vBulletin CMS Widgets - Top posters widget type

What does this do?
This mod provides a Top Posters widget type which can be configured to show the members who made the most posts over a period of time.

Features

• Provides widget type Top Posters.
• Displays a list of the top posters on your forum inside a widget.
• Allows multiple instances of the widget.
• Easy installation via products system.
• Configuration options:
  • Usergroups to include
  • Eight different time periods to choose from
  • Number of posters to display.
• Displays avatar of 'top poster'

Potential features

• Exclude forum(s) from counting
• Exclude forum(s) with no post count
• Top all time posters (eg based on post count)
• Top bloggers widget
• Top article posters widget
• Top social groups widget
• Top posted in forums widget
• Top posted in threads widget
• Top commented on album/blog/articles widget

Installation
1. Upload the contents of the upload folder to your site.
2. Import product file.
3. Clear CMS cache. (failing to do this may mean the widget doesn't show up in the create new widget box)

Usage
1. Go into the widget manager and select Create new widget.
2. Select the top posters widget type from the drop down list.
3. Fill out the remaining form items and hit save.
4. Configure the widget from the widget manager.
5. Add the widget to a layout.

What is an Alpha release?
This modification has been released as an Alpha release. This means that it has only been tested within a limited number of environments, eg My development board and boards of a small number of other users. As far as I'm aware, all releases are bug free at the time of release, but due to the limited number of users not all the bugs may have been found yet.

As with all mods, make a full backup of your database before installing and ideally, test on a development board which matches the setup of your live board as closely as possible first. Please report any issues you have and any solutions you find, to help improve this product.

Changelog

• 4.0-0.1 a2
  • Fixed issue with configuring widget on vb 4.1
  • Added avatar of top poster to widget.
• 4.0-0.1 a1
  • Initial release

Notes

• I created this widget because the existing ones that do similar things had performance issues and the mod author was unwilling/slow to implement the fix I sent them. This behaives much more reasonably, even in the worst case (top posters this year) It takes a little over a second when run against my 1.2 million posts board. Considering that this result is cached for a day, the performance implications of this widget are minimal.
• Caching behaivour can only be changed by editing the code; currently the last* time periods cache the result to the end of the time period (eg if you are using last month, the cache is set to expire about 1 minuite after the start of the next month) For this year and this month, the cache is set to expire after a day, this week is set to expire after 6 hours and today is set to expire hourly. A future version may allow customisation over these timings.
• The Planned features are a set of ideas that I could do using the current code fairly easilly; however most are not required for my own use, if there are sufficient people interested in a feature to make it worth my while coding it, I will do.
• This is an example of how to write a widget properly and I used the direct php execution widget as a model of how to implement it. Please feel free to use this code as an example when creating your own widgets types.

[Carnage]

Also, it would be nice if the statistics were up to date. If I use "Top posters for this week" - it'll display that I've had x amount of posts, but as soon as I post again, it will not update unless i clear the CMS cache.

In order to reduce load on your forums by executing potentially large queries on a regular basis the result is cached for a certain period depending on the timescale selected. For the this week option, it updates every 6 hours.

If your forum is fairly small < 100,000 posts you can probably get away with a much shorter time frame - this can be done by editing the code. The current timings were selected to provide a tradeoff between up to date statistics and the potential to slow down the page display time on large boards.

A future version will allow customisation of these timings in the control panel, however there is no eta on this version as I'm not currently working on this mod (my next planned release is on the PBPG mods and so I've been working flat out on them to get them ready ASAP)

[Juggernaut]

I don't see any widget after I upload the files and install, even after clearing the cms cache, I don't see any widgets in the widget manager or the layout manager.

[Carnage]

This is a widget type not a widget. To use it install the product then go into the widget manager select create new widget - the top posters widget type should appear in the drop down box.

[Juggernaut]

I can see it now, however when I try to change the configuration, when I hit save, it always resets to the default configuration of "last month" anything I can do to include all the new usergroups I've created and show last week's top poster?

[Juggernaut]

After clearing the cms cache my widget manager is broken I get a long error message relating to this widget, I already tried uninstalling the widget, but it didn't help with the problem.

PHP Code:

Fatal error: Trying to get widgettype class from invalid  widgettype '24' on line 270 in [path]/packages/vbcms/types.php in  [path]/vb/vb.php on line 287
#0  vb_error_handler(256, Trying to get widgettype class from invalid widgettype  '24' on line 270 


[Juggernaut]

You can ignore my post above, I was able to fix my issue.

[Carnage]

Might I ask how you fixed it in case anyone else comes up with the same problem?

[Juggernaut]

^^ Sorry for the long time since posting, but I manage to get rid of my error messages by uninstalling the widget, and dropping the database rows for this widget and widget type through phpmyadmin. I still can't get it running on my forum, although I think it's a great widget, it might be conflicting with another mod or template edit I might have made, so I will have to be without it for now. Thank you so much for taking your time helping me out, Carnage

[Aurvandil]

Originally Posted by Carnage-

Would you want it based on posts? Members? Members joined per time period?

"Members joined per time period" and/or "posts per time period" would be great for a top social groups widget.

By the way - great work with the top poster widget, it is very useful. If one of the following features was added as well, it would be perfect:
# Exclude forum(s) from counting
# Exclude forum(s) with no post count

[Lomak]

hello

how can I specify 'Post from all time'